Eating popsicles at the kitchen table at night. First cherry. Then grape. We recap eachother with events since our last visit.

The kids sleep soundly where the kids sleep. Will wakes before me and takes Aurora to a playground. I’ll later play the role of the nagging spouse because he left no note. Avery wakes up and wants to snuggle as children often do. “I love you,” he says as he finds the nook of my arm.

Breakfast. Pancakes. Cereal. An avocado thrown on the floor by Aurora to signal that she’s done eating it.

Roadtrip to Salem. We browse for toys and comic books. Will rescues two books for me from a used book store despite an avalanche of paperbacks. Aurora in the stoller pointing at other strollers. “Baby!” She exclaims. The breeze is refreshing as we walk through Salem Common.

That evening, a family visit to Revere beach. My first trip to the ocean outside of various locations in Florida. We explain to Avery about the unpleasantries of throwing sand and wade with Aurora into the water. The sand is squishy and cold. I avoid the seaweed that’s washed up ashore. Aurora picks up pebbles and drops them into the puddles, laughing.

The Roman poet, Ovid, once spoke of transformation. Fifteen books comprised his narrative poem, Metamorphoses. In retrospect, to say that Ovid spoke of transformation would be an obscene understatement.

Ovid seemed firm in his belief that love was a constant catalyst in transformation. It was the recurring theme in Metamorphoses, rearing its head as either a personal love for another or oneself or taking physical manifestation in the form of Cupid (Eros for those of the Greek persuasion).

Often leaving its subjects humiliated and confused by irrationality, the end result of love in Ovid’s poem was transformation. Apollo’s objects of affection, Daphne and Hyacinth, became a laurel tree and a flower, respectively. The water nymph, Salmacis, found herself so overpowered by lust for the handsome youth, Hermaphroditus, that they morphed into one beautiful, androgynous being.

During a recent weekend visit from Will and his children, Avery and Aurora, we ventured to the Buffalo Museum of Science with one of my dearest friends, Leslie, and her 5-year-old daughter, Violet.

Avery and Violet

The kids took to eachother like they were the best of friends, holding hands and laughing and playing and running throughout the exhibits like children ought to do. I sent a photo from our museum visit to Leslie. It was of Avery and Violet exploring a play area, hand-in-hand. Her reply was: “Who would’ve thought this possible about a decade ago, my friend?” That reply echoed in my head as if the nymph herself were pining away in my brain. A night out with Laura Palmer at The Bang-Bang Bar would have come across as tame compared to a night out with Leslie and I a decade ago.

That reply. Those words. They weren’t fifteen books that comprised a narrative poem but they became my own, personal, Metamorphoses. The words that perfectly brought to light my own transformation to a place that I never expected to be. A place that I am happy to be. A place where saying that Cupid had no part in getting me here would be as much of an obscene understatement as saying that Ovid only spoke of transformation.